Gonna Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse

"Make them an offer they can't refuse." Some hope perhaps. It's probably all too easy to decline the offer, the special offer. Under current circumstances, that is. And those circumstances will be why there has been an advert in the "Diario". What's the offer? Hotel rooms; hotel rooms in August. Want to know which ones? Try these: Uyal and Daina in Puerto Pollensa; Platja Daurada and Yate in Can Picafort; Cala San Vicente and Molins in Cala San Vicente. I daresay there are other offers circulating. It's not as if these are lousy hotels; they're not. Quite the contrary. As so often I was asked how I thought the season was going the other day. It was by Maria who runs Cas Capella and other places in Alcúdia. I mentioned the advert. "Daina!?" Yes, the Daina. I guess there are places you would just always expect to be full. Offers in early season or after August, but during August ...

While there were no offers in the ad for Alcúdia hotels, it isn't the case that everything is hunky-dory. It was the tourist office that had pointed out the ad to me, so I asked about occupancy. Two per cent down in July apparently. Ok, may not sound a lot, but it's still a couple of points less. For July. And that comes from the figures the town hall receives. One kind of suspects they may not be the whole picture, but that's only a suspicion. While the larger resorts may just be able to absorb lower numbers (though even that is obviously questionable), a place like Cala San Vicente is going to be struggling if two of its better hotels are having to offer specials. The all-inclusive Simar and Don Pedro may have the bodies but those bodies are unlikely to be the spenders of a Cala San Vicente or Molins hotel.


CANAL UPDATE
Clean. In fact as I was going past the grand canal and then up to the Sea Club entrance, the fountains were in full shower, and all seemed perfectly agreeable. And it was. You see some of what goes into this blog is in response to mutterings, such as "oh the state of the canals"; hence I go look and find what appeared yesterday. Then it's all fine again. I guess there's always going to be something that isn't just right, but hats off presumably to the costas as there were no bottles, no cups and certainly no dead fish.

But just to prove that not all is right and well in the world of waterways, there comes the little local difficulty in Pollensa regarding the obnoxious smells at night from the torrent Sant Jordi. In the "Diario" neighbours close to the torrent in the port area are quoted as saying that at times they can hardly breathe because of the smell. The town hall - in the form of the mayor - denies that there any nasties floating along its length and that water-treatment is functioning correctly. The government environment ministry (them again) also says that it is functioning correctly and adds that it isn't actually their problem anyway, it's the town hall's, who in turn say everything's ok. Well fine, except it isn't, as the neighbours can apparently testify to. Why do I have the impression that the division of responsibility may not be functioning as well as the water treatment is allegedly meant to be?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Simon and Garfunkel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFEnoITiWE). Today's title - soul singer who was also a part of what really was a rather good R&B/dance group of the '90s?

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